Are you the kind of person who reads the instructions before you start something new ? Or do you only search “help” when you are stuck?
How we learn has interested me for some time - I suppose ever since I was first introduced to Honey and Mumford’s Learning Styles . More recently we have been discussing how we learn with our students at Edinburgh Napier University.
In the workplace there has been a switch over recent years from “training” to “learning” and whilst I personally think that this can only be a good thing I wonder how many people really know or understand how they themselves learn best. When I found that I had a strong tendency to being an “activist” learner using Honey & Mumford’s theory a lot of issues about the way I worked fell into place ( this possibly had as much to do with the fact that I do prefer to learn by doing than the theory itself..)
Experienced trainers know to include a variety of activities in their programmes to incorporate the needs of as many of their students as possible. Many of us have been “taught” in the past by lecturers/teachers/trainers who did not. As an example I know that my understanding of economics is as much to do with the way my lecturer worked with us ( interesting/exciting/varied) as my interest in the subject ( hmmm - very little!).
OK - the activist learners reading this post may have already moved on so let me get to the point.
Here are my suggestions of how you might learn - my interpretation of Honey & Mumford and many other learning styles
- you have never done this before - but you will simply jump in and give it a go
- you have never done this before - but you have done something similar and using that experience will give it a go
- you have never done this before -but you have read about it and have some background knowledge so you will give it a go
- you have never done this before - so you will need to go and read about it and ask questions before you do
and to make sense of what happened ( throwing in a bit of Kolb’s theory here) add …
…the students I am currently working with are required to apply their learning in class in their workplace and write a reflective report on what happened. Having read many of those reports I strongly believe that the power of reflecting on your learning - no matter what your learning style is - cannot be underestimated.
Please share your views and experience on this. It would be a great help to me ( and my students will thank you too!)
It’s the New Year. Some people have gone back to work after the break with a heavy heart. Some have decided already that the want a new job in 2010 and will be scanning the job pages/sites as I write this.
It’s also the time for New Year Resolutions. They are about change. Change takes time .
Why do so many resolutions fail? Often because they are just too big.
Like any goal breaking a big goal into small chunks to build on is often the best way to go about it.
As human beings - and especially as employees - we hate to feel powerless. That we have no control over our future.
So one important step that we can all take this first week in January 2010 is to consider our own development needs. Ask for feedback from colleagues and your boss to help refine them. Think about your long term ambitions and make sure that what you do now will be useful then.
By all means discuss funding any training with your line manager but if the answer is “we have no budget” don’t use that as an excuse to sit back and moan about how unfair that is - decide what you can do with the resources you have. Not all learning opportunities come with a financial cost.
- Taking a voluntary role with a local group can help develop skills.
- Researching areas of interest on line can improve your knowledge.
- Asking someone you admire to mentor you can add a different perspective to how you view yourself and your skills and talents.
- Offering to listen to a friend and help them work out their future plans if they will do the same for you helps two people at the same time!
The longest journey starts with the first step - how about you take responsibility for that step today?
(With thanks to Wally Bock for this inspiring post )
Following on from my previous post about whether something has to be finished to be valuable and prompted by the comment made by Dilly about learning from trying things I was reminded of the old adage
“if at first you don’t succeed try and try again..”
I have to admit that ( too) often I have laid something aside because it was not “perfect”. But whenever I am making jewellery I have no problem at all with breaking a piece up and reworking it until I get a finished result that I like. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 remakes before I get there. I use the same materials give or take a piece of wire or some small crimps - and on the way I usually stumble across some other look that I can try out at another time. And just recently my daughter bought a hand-made necklace that has sharp edges which makes it uncomfortable to wear. She asked me if I could file these down but my efforts did not help much. She has now asked me to break that up and remake it..so I will be using somebody else’s materials in my own way.
Taking this as an example for other “creative” projects here’s a couple of questions
1 If you were to rework an existing project could you use the same ingredients in another way for a more satisfying result? ( this could also be useful in preparing for a job interview !)
2 Do you have materials from other resources that you can blend/rework? ( always having in mind copyright issues of course!)
3 What could you learn during the process of either of those?
Thanks to Dilly for the inspiration!
In the most recent Metasaga ( more info at the foot of this post) we led a group round the National Gallery of Scotland to look for metaphors in the paintings.
Lesley ( my co-guide) and I had chosen a number of stops between us for questions. The final one was mine. It is a painting by Italian painter Correggio and hangs near the entrance of the gallery. The painting is complete except for the central figure which is still in a sort of sketched format. I have tried researching this more but drawn a blank so if I get the artistic comments wrong please forgive - or correct - me.
I understand that this might have been a draft for another picture. Or the central figure might have been left deliberately blank so that a patron could be painted in. Whether either of those are accurate this unfinished painting was bought by another artist ( who clearly admired the work) and is thought to be sufficiently important to be hung in the gallery.
Bearing this in mind the questions I had at that stop on the Metasaga were
Do you have anything unfinished ( and maybe even put aside or discarded) that would be valuable to others? Maybe they would be willing to take it over and develop it further? Or work in collaboration to finish it with you?
Does what you are doing have to be finished to be valuable?
I actually thought I had posted on this topic already and I realised that I hadn’t when I read this excellent post from Ian Aspin on his Really Good Thinking blog which includes another question on the same theme
“Let’s stop right now and ask “what are we not deciding/starting/doing/finishing now because we don’t think it’ll be perfect?”.”
Worth thinking about?
Metasaga
I was about to start writing an outline for the new Financial Education programme that I will deliver in Scotland with my colleagues from Speakersbank sponsored by a major global bank when an e-mail from the CIPD ( the UK body for HR professionals) arrived in my inbox which lead me to this ( incredibly detailed) article about why HR people need to understand the financial side of the business they are in.
It got me thinking about what levels of financial literacy we need.
Lets think about the basics
The training I am preparing is aimed at young people in school. The English and Scottish school curriculums are different but I think ( hope) that their aims to develop knowledge of money and how to manage it - personally and from a business perspective - are similar. The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence outlines stages under the heading of “Money” which sits under the main heading of Maths starting at early years in recognising what money looks like and is for through to being able to compare financial products and make informed choices. Our training - over one school day- will be aimed at speaking about issues like comparing costs when making buying decisions, the costs and benefits of using bank cards and considering savings and credit.
When working with youngsters on this topic recently I was encouraged by how much they knew about money and related this to their own spending habits. The media coverage of the banking crisis clearly had had an impact on their knowledge ( and views ) on what banks do. But when I spoke about this more generally I was struck by how many people were surprised that it needed to be taught in school and when I questioned where they learned about money the usual answer is from their parents. Now I hate to have to say this - but sometimes, in some areas , doing what our parents did is not necessarily a good thing! But knowing what to do with your first salary payment when you leave school can be really helpful in preventing some of the financial disasters that lurk out there.
Then the obligations
Then there is understanding your financial obligations regarding outgoings about which you have no choice. I spent many years as a tax consultant specialising in personal tax. The UK income tax system is very very complicated ( is there a simple tax system anywhere?) but the basics are that everyone has an allowance up to which no tax is due. For employees, that allowance is divided into 12 monthly chunks and is allocated against the income for that month before tax is charged. National Insurance Contributions are also due on income between certain levels. I have lost count of the times when people tell me they were surprised ( shocked actually) how much tax they had to pay when they started work and can only assume that they did not learn this at school. That needs to be addressed too and I am sure that it will be.
Finally finance in relation to business
One of the sections on the Money part of the Scottish Curriculum though is ” I can use the terms profit and loss in buying and selling activities and can make simple calculations for this” and I think this leads neatly into what they CIPD article talks about. This is aimed at “decision maker” level HR professionals and I liked the comment from Vanessa Robinson when she said “A big part of business is making sure that the books add up. Not being able to do that means it’s harder for you to connect and converse with the people you are working with.” . Absolutely.
I believe though that any employee at whatever level who has a clearer idea of how businesses work have an advantage in that they can understand the issues that affect their own business. For example an employee who feels unhappy with their current salary level and who can access and understand the company accounts will be better placed to negotiate - or, as may be more the case right now, understand why increases may not be possible.
So as I go back to my writing the school programme please tell me what do you know now that you wish you had learned about money and finance when you were at school that I should include. And what do you know now about finance in relation to business that you think could be helpful for all employees to learn?
